Ten years ago, a group of people in Ireland came together to try to reduce their overall carbon footprint by building an ecological community. They looked at how they could incor-porate sustainability into every aspect of their lives – how they could build and power their houses, how they could earn their living, how they could travel and grow their food.

More than three quarters of Europeans live in urban areas. What urban residents produce, buy, eat, and throw away, the way they move around and where they live all have an impact on the environment. At the same time, the way a city is built also affects the way its residents live. We asked Roland Zinkernagel from the City of Malmö in Sweden about concrete actions to make their city sustainable.